"Webbiquity" is about being everywhere online when and where buyers are looking for what you sell. It's what I help B2B clients achieve through a coordinated strategy of SEO, search marketing, social media, brand management, content marketing, and influencer relations, supported by the right marketing technology.

How to Use Article Marketing as Part of Your Social Media Strategy

As you may know by now, article marketing is an effective way to gain credibility and establish yourself as an expert in your field. By writing articles about topics of interest to your readers, and distributing them on article directories, you can give your content the kind of exposure that would be hard to get anywhere else. But, what many people don’t realize is that article marketing isn’t just for directories anymore.

Social media has become an effective vehicle for content distribution, and articles are no exception. According to the Small Business Success Index, sponsored by Network Solutions (2010), one in five small businesses are now actively using social media. About 75% of those surveyed have a company page on a social networking site. What makes social media so effective for marketing purposes? The simple answer is that it gives your content massive exposure across a wide range of platforms.

Articles can easily be distributed using social media news and bookmarking sites, for example. Each of these sites has strengths and weaknesses, and some will suit certain goals better than others. Here are 5 of the most popular:

1. Facebook– With over 250 million members, it’s got tremendous reach. Generate interest with fans and friends by talking about topics related to your industry then link to your articles on your fan page. Ping articles and blogs automatically, so your groups can see your latest posts.

2. Twitter– Similar to Facebook, Twitter allows you to market your articles automatically and in real time. As a micro-blogging service, it allows businesses to communicate and share the latest information with customers, and link to articles and other content using a url shortener.

3. LinkedIn– For professional networking, setting up a profile in LinkedIn allows you to share your expertise with others in your group. Market your articles by sending them to your account or have them pulled from another social media account, to show up under your updates.

4. Digg– A really popular news/bookmarking site that can bring your articles massive exposure. Submitting your article to Digg takes interested readers directly to your article and your site, where they can also browse archived articles and check you out.

5. YouTube– What do videos have to do with article marketing? Both are content, just in different formats. Turn your articles into videos, using your text as a script. This can be done inexpensively, so almost any budget can handle it. YouTube is the 4th most popular website in the world, and videos consistently rank high in the search engines, so the potential to go viral is huge.

There are many more social media sites that lend themselves to article marketing. Check out the handy chart put together by the folks at Seomoz.com for more tips on how to use each site to market your business.

Article marketing has the power to establish you as an authority and give interested consumers a way to access your business through links to your site. Social media supercharges your articles by giving them wide and deep distribution throughout the web. Together, they help you reach a large, targeted audience without the need for an expensive marketing campaign. Be sure, though, that you research the social media sites- how they work and what their terms of service are. Some will work better for you than others.

Also, remember that article marketing is only effective if you commit to creating and distributing fresh content every week or so. Maintain both aspects of your marketing strategy and you’ll see results.

Comments

One thing that everyone is missing is LinkedIn groups. When you post an article to a group, the article gets forwarded to everyone who ops in for emails. Amazing source of traffic and you don’t need to be connected with any of them.

Great point Fred, LinkedIn groups are a great source of targeted traffic. This effectiveness is somewhat diminished by those who try to use group news or discussion posting for blatant self-promotion, but most groups have some mechanism in place for policing such behavior.

Excellent article. As a professional courtesy it has been posted on http://www.eFinancePortal.com, an interactive, multicultural Business, Financial and Educational Portal & Search Engine.

For future reference you can register for free, which allows you to create multiple profiles and a personal management account to submit your content (or to any of our 50,000 categories and 17 industries (one of which is Marketing & Social Media) directly to the Portal,in your written languages of preference, within seconds of your confirmed submission…24/7

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Guest post by Beth Hrusch As you may know by now, article marketing is an effective way to gain credibility and establish yourself as an expert in your field. By writing articles about topics of interest to your readers, and distributing them on arti…